Living in the In-Between

As I sit here today looking out on a gray Sunday afternoon, things look plain, fatigued, not-yet and in-between. Uncovered by snow, the naked grass is not a true green. The month of March is one of those phenomena of classic in-betweenness. The early days are still considered winter, yet the mid-month days are morphing into spring that is not yet here. A true time of transition, things are not what they were, but not yet what they shall become.

Our lives can be like that. Sometimes the lines are gray and unclear where the seams of one life season comes to an end and we sense another approaching. We feel plain, fatigued, not-yet and in -between. We know we are not the person we were in so many other passing seasons but we do not know yet who we are and shall be in the coming days and long nights of our lives.

So what can we learn from nature in these seasons we seem to share? I watch her humility as she lies fallow, not dressing up with any pretense or trying to make something happen prematurely. She rests in a secret. I stop for a moment. I hear an invitation to observe, to listen. She has learned there are times of hiddenness, plainness and then there are seasons of manifestation, of things appearing when it is their due, appointed time. It seems this simple wisdom is inherently in her, sown there by her Creator.

This gray day of March is a good teacher. My husband, my friends and I are becoming older. Our souls are rich vintage, yet young, and our bodies are aging. We have journeyed through many lovely seasons and a hefty share of hurts through life’s losses and griefs, expected and unexpected. We may feel gray, plain, fatigued, not-yet and in-between. We are lying fallow, having had a past season of productivity but not knowing what is coming next. We are not what we were but neither are we what we shall be.

And so I study nature. And while I do, I hear yet another invitation to just be, in stillness. Words are coming, rising up from a deep place to my inward listener. They are strangely familiar. Something in me knows them in silent surety. ” You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways… You formed my inward parts, my frame was not hidden from You when I was made in secret…and in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them. How precious are your thoughts to me…”

And I realize I can rest in the shared secret that the gray day in March and I have had sown into us from our Creator. I will join nature in restful humility and wait… for the days that have been fashioned for me have already been written. They are in hiddenness, but are coming soon to be released into a time of manifestation. As surely as the past has come and was fulfilled, the present future is about to be.

In-betweenness is a resting time, a re-calibrating time, a covering time, a humble time. I will embrace it in the grayness. I will learn its secret … and trust, and wait.